We are a grass roots organization located in both Israel and the United States. Our intention is to be pro-active on behalf of Israel. This means we will identify the topics that need examination, analysis and promotion. Our intention is to write accurately what is going on here in Israel rather than react to the anti-Israel media pieces that comprise most of today's media outlets.

Thursday, July 03, 2014

The Encouragers: Jihadists' Agents of Influence

While there are people who
mass-murder, one factor especially matters: whether around them are
individuals, or a circle of individuals, who encourage them to mass murder.
The young men leaving Britain to go fight in Syria are not going in spite of the teachings of certain religious leaders, but because of them.
When Christians, Jews or even other Muslims and others are targeted
around the world by Islamists, we even hope that this urge has nothing
to do with any of the texts or books or preachings or encouragements in
the milieu from which the perpetrators come.

Today in America, Britain and most other Western countries we are
still governed by politicians and bureaucrats who refuse to identify the
principal form of fanaticism that threatens us. We are governed by
elites who hesitate to say -- if they ever say -- what distinguishes the
current threat of our time, radical Islam, as the latest group of
jihadists, ISIS, establishes beachheads in Syria and Iraq and plants its
flag at the border of Jordan and Turkey. In the blancmange of political
correctness, which this refusal entails, we hear of the threat of
"extremism" and "radicalism" in general. This season there is even talk
of "violent extremism" in particular, as though violent extremism is an
event like the weather, which could affect almost any sufferer at any
time.
Of course in some ways it is understandable that this pretence should
have come about. Rightly, nobody should claim to be targeting all
Muslims; so there is a nervousness about singling out what is different —
namely, violence -- in one especially prominent ideology at the moment.
Sometimes this nervousness, and the resultant spreading of blame,
appear to be a justification. It did a few years ago when Anders Breivik
in Norway appeared to some to have just demonstrated that anybody might
be persuaded to plant car bombs in a city center or gun down innocent
people in a youth camp. This horror, perhaps more than any other recent
event, is wheeled out to assist those who wish to avoid the main issue.
Our countries at the time were filled with claims that anybody who had
ever been critical of radical Islam had in some way contributed to
Breivik's non-Islamic atrocity. These claims often came from the same
people who refuse to blame any wider circle of influence for the
outrages of the jihadists. What was, and is, strangest here is that it
fails to notice the two most important differences between
mass-murderers, such as Breivik or Timothy McVeigh, and the rest of us
-- and the difference between them and the sort of Islamists who have
just killed three Israeli teenagers and threaten countries around the
globe.
First, what distinguishes people of violence from everybody else is
not their ideas or motivations but the act of violence itself. It is not
the ideology of most mass murderers that distinguishes them. It is that
they end up committing mass murder. Not to be too glib, there are
people every day who feel like killing someone. What distinguishes the
person who actually does kill someone is that they did so. High school
killers have the same distinction. The opinions, tastes and despondency
of such mass murderers are not always easily distinguishable from any
other number of other unhappy and enraged teenagers. What distinguishes
even high school shooters from their contemporaries is not their ideas,
but that they end up shooting at, and killing, their classmates. So it
is with political extremism. It is actually using the guns and the bombs that differentiate them from other people.
The second distinction, at least as important, and which we appear
equally insistent on ignoring, is that while there are people who mass
murder, one factor especially matters: whether around them are
individuals, or a circle of individuals, who encourage them to mass murder.
Certainly there are people from all sorts of backgrounds and with all
sorts of beliefs who can carry out acts of violence. This was
demonstrated by Breivik, McVeigh and countless others. But as far as I
know, Breivik's "influencers" or "inspirers" never included people who
advocated placing car-bombs in public places or gunning down young
political activists on an island.

This is a distinction that should matter. From the Palestinian
territories, across the disintegrating Middle East, to certain mosques
and madrassas in the West, just such teachings are emanating from
the fringes of the Islamic world. The young men leaving Britain to go
fight in Syria are not going in spite of the teachings of certain religious leaders but because of them. In the same way, terrorists in the West Bank do not target Jews for murder and abduction in spite of the urgings of the preachers of Hamas but because of them, and the culture of which they are a part.
We are so intent upon avoiding the problem of our time, radical
Islam, that in one scenario we are willing to ignore the people who call
for violence and murder, and on the other hand pretend that those who
have never called for violence or murder have actually been calling for
it all along. If any Muslim anywhere is attacked, the Western media is
eager to attribute the fault to anybody who has ever analysed or even
noticed radical Islam. They blame the person who has noticed the fire
rather than tackling the fire that is being pointed to. Yet when that
same fire is burning, when Christians, Jews, other Muslims, secularists
and others are targeted around the world by Islamists, we remain intent
on hoping that this urge has nothing to do with any of the texts or
books or preachings or encouragements in the milieu from which the
perpetrators come. And all this in spite of the circumstance that it is
we in the West who are often the ones financing and legitimizing these
people, and sometimes -- as with the Palestinian Authority -- even
handing them the funds to target us with.
The wilful effort to ignore what is in front of our eyes, to cast
blame where there is none and ignore it where there is, are not
demonstrations of entirely wholesome societies. Rather, they are
examples of societies suffering through a sickness. And if we cannot see
our way through this, then it is this sickness that may yet prove to be
the one historians in the future will recognize to have been terminal.

Caroline Glick & Mark Levin: The Israeli Solution -- A One-State Pla

Why Israel Opposes International Forces in the Jordan Valley

U.S. scholars' group votes in favor of academic boycott of Israel

Yet another indication of the absolute corruption of American academia today. "US scholars' group votes in favor of academic boycott of Israel," from the Jerusalem Post, December 16: NEW YORK – The 5,000-member American Studies Association (ASA), which describes itself as “the nation’s oldest and largest association devoted to...http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/12/us-scholars-group-votes-in-favor-of-academic-boycott-of-israel.html

Israel Living Prophecy

A senior New Israel Fund officer told a U.S. official in 2010 that the disappearance of the Jewish state would not be a tragedy, according to a document that was leaked by Wikileaks...She commented that she believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.

Mideast expert Michael Widlanski: Fatah is a joke

US-Israeli talks focus on Ahmadinejad's possible ouster

How to exploit the deep cracks forming in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration for removing the Iranian president was a top item on the agenda of the high-level talks between Barack Obama's advisers and Israeli officials at Mossad headquarters in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, Wednesday, July 29.

DEBKAfile's Iranian sources report that Ahmadinejad's cabinet is falling apart; of his original lineup of 21 ministers, only nine remain at their posts.

The Identity Of The Land

Why the Palestinians need to recognize the Jewish State

We do NOT support a 2-state solution

A January 2009 poll found that Americans oppose creating a Palestinian state by 45-31 percent. A February 2009 Maagar Mohot Survey Institute poll has also shown that Israelis oppose creating a Palestinian state by 51-32 percent.

Many other polls tell a similar story.

These figures suggest that Americans and Israelis have understood that creating a Palestinian state under current conditions will not bring peace but merely another terror state.

Netanya,Israel

Jerusalem At Night

Why reconstruct Gaza without making demands

- that Shalit be release without convicted terrorists being released by Israel in exchange,

- that the US be put in charge of the southern border to ensure that Hamas isn’t rearmed?

- that their three preconditions be accepted by Hamas, i.e. agree to all former agreements,recognize Israel and renounce terror

- that Hamas amend their Charter

- That Hamas disconnect from Iran

The answer is that they don’t want to.

Children of Hamas

Picture of Hamas children the media does not show you

IDF: Civilian Deaths in Gaza Less than 25% of Total

A maximum of 25% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli operation are innocent civilians, the head of the IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), Col. Moshe Levi, said Wednesday. According to Palestinian medical officials, Israel has killed some 1,000 Palestinians and more than half of them are civilians. Levi said the CLA had compiled a list with the names of 900 Palestinians killed during the fighting. He said that 150 names were of women, children and elderly, and that the maximum number of civilians killed so far was 250. Levi also dismissed claims that 43 Palestinians were killed in an IDF attack on a Hamas terror cell that was firing mortars at Israeli forces from within an UNRWA school in Jabalya. Levi said 21 Palestinians were killed in the attack, including a number of Hamas operatives. (Jerusalem Post)

Hamas teaching the children of Gaza

An Iranian reformist daily newspaper has criticized Hamas "for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals." This is reported in today's Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam. The Palestinian daily adds that in response the Iranian government has closed the newspaper.

"The Iranian news agency "Irna" reported yesterday, that the Iranian Culture Ministry has closed the reformist daily newspaper "Karjo Zaran", because it published a report that included criticism of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). On December 30 the paper published a statement of a reformist student organization, that has criticized Hamas for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals. The statement was published whilst the Iranian government expresses a unified stands against Israel, and Tehran is overwhelmed by demonstrations against Israel."

[Al-Ayyam, Jan. 1, 2009] Thanks PMW

Iran-backed Hamas Rocket, Mortar Attacks and Nuclear Developments

9,400+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2003. [1]3,200+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza in 2008 alone. [2]6,500+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. [3]543+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israeli territory during the ceasefire from June 19 to Dec. 19, 2008. [4]28 deaths caused by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel since 2001. The dead include Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire ended, Iran-backed Palestinian groups in Gaza fired rockets and mortars that killed an Israeli-Arab construction worker and a mother of four who was seeking shelter in a bus station as a rocket warning siren sounded. [5]1,000+ people in Israel injured from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2001, including Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire, 44 Israelis have been injured and 200 have been treated for shock. [6]Thanks Israel Project

It began with this...

The British Foreign Office, November 2nd, 1917Dear Lord Rothschild,I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate theachievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities inPalestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.2

Signed,Arthur James Balfour[Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs]

Favorite Books

While Europe Slept

About Me

Semi-retired Professor, now also permanent resident of Israel;divides time between both countries-serves on several Boards of Directors for Israel advocacy groups;Chana, resident of Jerusalem, JCPA member

Syria is an Occupier-Are You Listening World?

As of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a scandal as the occupation itself.

The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border just produced by the International Lebanese Committee for UN Security Council Resolution 1559, an American NGO that has consultative status with the UN. In meticulous detail - supplemented by photographs and satellite images - the authors describe precisely where and how Lebanon has been infiltrated.

Though the land grabs are small affairs individually, they collectively add up to an area amounting to about 4% of Lebanese soil - in U.S. terms, the proportional equivalent of Arizona. Of particular note is that the area of Syrian conquest dwarves that of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms which amount to an area of about 12 square miles.

It would be nice to see the Arab world protest this case of illegal occupation, given its passions about the subject.

Information worth Possessing

"Israel gave the Palestinians an autonomy in 42% of the West Bank and Gaza after the Oslo accords in the early 90's. Over 92% of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza were then under the administration of the Palestinian Authority and its Chairman Yasser Arafat.

"Israel is surrounded by 10 hostile Arab countries who do not even recognize its right to exist ( Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Lybia, Morocco, Tunisia, Aden) and Iran"